In over 20 years of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, there has been no significant progress towards a peaceful agreement. It has been argued that there is not enough incentive for leaders to agree to a compromise and that the citizens are not ready to accept one. In this context, the way the conflict and the enemy are described in public discourse is important not only because it represents the viewpoints of those producing the discourse but because it can have a real effect on public opinion. This paper examines discourse on Azerbaijan and the future of Nagorno-Karabakh in an official newspaper, showing that distrust of Azerbaijan and rigid expectations about the future of Nagorno-Karabakh are dominant.

After the fall of the Soviet Union a number of violent ethnic disputes were concluded through the establishment of ceasefires but have yet to be finalized through peace accords. This development resulted in the creation of de facto states in a setting known as ‘frozen conflicts’. These de facto states have managed to endure decades of unrecognition, stuck in a situation of “no war, no peace” and constitutes today “effective” political entities. The post-war development in these frozen conflicts has continuously surprised academia, defying pessimistic prediction of their sustainability. Following the positive, hybridized peace etymology laid out by Oliver Richmond, this thesis aims at exploring the peace- and state processes that has occurred during the Nagorno Karabakh peace process in order to explain the ambiguous developments that have been going on despite the limbo-like state of unrecognition. The relation between external and internal processes is interrogated through a periodization of key events, and thereafter a comprehensive analysis of how the processes relate to each other over time. The thesis concludes that the strong presence of identity politics regarding the historical Nagorno Karabakh favors the often violent and protective state formation process but is at least partially controlled by the international attempts at peace building. Local formations of peace do not allow for a reintegration of Nagorno Karabakh into Azerbaijan, at least not without explicit and extensive security and autonomy guarantees. Likewise, the external processes of peace and state building does not allow for local agency from Nagorno Karabakh, as it is viewed through a negative ontology of peace. The processes does provide some rather successful developments, as the almost finalized Land swap deal and the Madrid principles, but lacks the momentum of conquering the dominance of perceived or actualized violent state formation processes.

After the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s, with the emergence of the multipolarity and the formation of new entities in the Eurasian space Turkey search for new ways due to the declining role in the West-East tensions forced it to turn to the East. In this area, rapprochement with Azerbaijan from a national and ethnic point of view to be an optimal way out. On this way, the master's thesis aims to analyze the Turkish-Azerbaijani relations in the 1990s. For this purpose, the following tasks have been set. Analysis of rapprochement trends in relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey after independence, analysis of the role of internal and external factors in this area, as well as the role of the legal framework in building relations.

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This dissertation aims to explain how Soviet national historiographies were constructed in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan, in 1936-1953 and what the political and ideological reasons were behind the way they were written. The dissertation aims to contribute to current scholarship on Soviet nationality policies; on Stalinist nation-building projects; and to the debate on whether the Soviet period was a project of developmentalist modernization or not. This dissertation aims to examine the process of national history writing in three republics from the local point of view, by using the local archival sources. For this research, archival materials that have been overlooked by scholars up to this point from the archives of the communist parties, academy of sciences, and central state archives in Kiev, Ukraine, Baku, Azerbaijan, and Almaty, Kazakhstan have been collected. The timeline starts with Zhdanov’s commission in 1936, which summoned historians and ideologues of the Communist Party in Moscow to write an all-Union history because a parallel campaign of writing national histories had been initialized by the local communist parties. The first two chapters cover the pre-war (1936-1941) period, when national histories were written after the demise of Pokrovskiian historiography. Although there was one ideology, there were different preferences in solving the problem of ethnogenesis, defining national heroes, and also different preferences among the sections of the past that national histories emphasized. The third chapter explains the construction of national histories during the war period (1941-1945). The chapter also presents how national histories were used for wartime propaganda. Finally, the last chapter is about the post-war discussions and the shift of emphasis from ‘national’ to ‘class’ that occurred in the non-Russian national narratives in the Zhdanovshchina period. While there was an ‘imperial design’ for the necessities of managing a multi-national state, the Soviet Union also appears as a modernization project for all three cases by constructing national narratives. Though non-Russian Soviet historiographies produced contradictory narratives in different decades, they also homogenized, codified and nationalized the narrative of the past. Regional, dynastic, religious, tribal figures and events incorporated into grandiose national narratives. Nations were primordialized and their national identities armed with spatial and temporal indigenousness within the borders of their national republics. Modern national identities of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gained from this homogenization and codification by the Soviet regime. Although modernism is not only about construction of national narratives, the latter points out the developmental and modernizing character of the Soviet period.

Pendant ces dernières années il y a eu aussi beaucoup des recherches axées à analyser pourquoi souvent les élections ne respectent pas ces standards, quel est leur rôle dans les régimes hybrides et autocratiques, et il y a aussi des recherches qui enquêtent notamment les fraudes électorales. Cette thèse propose une contribution dans le débat et elle souligne que les études sur les fraudes électorales on souvent sous-traitées : les dimensions internationales. Ces dimensions sont conceptualisées dans deux façonnes. La première concerne la pression démocratisant occidentale et comment elle peut influencer le changement et/ou l’évolution des fraudes électorales. La deuxième, concerne les dynamiques des socialisations en terme d’échange d’informations parmi les régimes hybrides par rapport diffèrent modalités de fraudes électorales. Selon mes analyses dans les cas où il y a une pression démocratisant occidentale plus forte les autorités locales changent les méthodes des fraudes électorales. Ce changement ne doit pas être considéré forcement comme un amélioration de l’intégrité électoral tout court. Plutôt, avec l’amélioration des cadres légales de la gestion électorale, les autorités modifient les fraudes pour essayer d’éluder le criticisme occidental. En autre, pour bien modifier les méthodes des fraudes électorales les autorités d’un pays recourent à des pratiques d’apprentissage tout en regardant les expériences des autres pays. Ces arguments théoriques ont été vérifiés sur trois cas d’études, notamment Armenia, Azerbaïdjan et Géorgie. Ces pays ont des caractéristiques en commune, qui permettent des analyses diachroniques et synchroniques concernant les fraudes électorales à partir de leurs indépendances de l’Union Soviétique. / During the last years many research have been conducted to analyse why elections fail, what is their role in hybrid as well as authoritarian regimes, and there is a growing stream of literature that is investigating electoral frauds and electoral malpractices. This thesis provides a contribution in this debate by pointing to one of the less analysed factors in the study of electoral frauds and electoral malpractices, which is the international dimension. The latter is conceptualized in two ways: the first one relates to Western democratizing pressure and how it can affect the change or the evolution of electoral frauds and malpractices. The second one concerns socialization dynamics in terms of methods of frauds and malpractices among authorities in different countries. It is argued that where there is a stronger Western democratizing pressure authorities change the way they conduct elections, even if this change does not forcefully means democratization. Rather, along with formal improvements in elections management, authorities alter and modify methods of frauds and malpractices as a way to elude Western criticism. In order to properly modify electoral frauds and malpractices, authorities resort to learning practices by looking at other experiences. These theoretical arguments have been verified on three cases study, which are Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. These countries share some key characteristics, which allowed for cross-temporal and spatial analysis regarding electoral frauds and malpractices since their independence from the Soviet Union.

Au cours du XXème siècle, l'étude de la politique répressive en URSS a été menée sans utilisation des sources statistiques et des données des organismes internationaux. Ces documents étaient tenus strictement secrets et donc inaccessibles. Avec la chute du mur de Berlin en 1989 et l'effondrement de l'URSS en 1991, le monde se trouve complètement modifié. Ce processus engendre la division de certains états en Europe, la création de nouvelles zones de conflit et aussi la proclamation de l'indépendance de certains pays comme l'Azerbaïdjan en octobre 1991. Ces modifications politiques provoquent des mouvements de population. Essentiellement liée à la sécurité, surtout en raison du conflit arrnéno azerbaïdjanais qui a influencé l'économie, les hommes émigrent et s'installent dans les pays de la CEl, particulièrement en Russie et en Ukraine, mais aussi en Allemagne, en Israël, et ailleurs. Aujourd'hui, les raisons de l'émigration du peuple azerbaïdjanais sont différentes. Notre problématique propose d'étudier, de façon historique et sociologique, l'ensemble des courants migratoires azerbaïdjanais vers la France à l'époque contemporaine, c'est-à-dire de la fin du XIXème siècle. au début du XXIème siècle. Cette question est éclairée par l'étude de mouvements migratoires des pays voisins. L'exemple azerbaïdjanais regroupe différents types d'immigration, c'est pourquoi il nous a paru pertinent et judicieux de l'analyser pour comprendre les enjeux actuels des mouvements de population. De plus, l'étude des flux migratoires azerbaïdjanais est intéressant de par ses caractéristiques culturelles, politiques et surtout économiques et permet d'accéder à une meilleure intelligibilité de nos sociétés. / During the twentieth century, the study of political repression in the USSR was conducted without the use of statistical sources and data from international organizations. These documents were kept strictly secret, and therefore inaccessible. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the world is in fact completely altered. This process leads to the division of many countries in Europe, which provokes the arousing of new areas of conflict, and also the proclamation of the in dependence of few countries such as Azerbaijan in October 1991. These political changes caused movements of population. Primarily related to security, mainly due to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, which changed the economy in a significant way, population migrate and settle in the CIS countries, more especially in Russia and in Ukraine, or also in Germany, in Israel and elsewhere. Nowadays, the reasons for the emigration of the Azerbaijani people are different. Our research scrutinizes, sociologically and historically, all Azerbaijani migration flows to France at the contemporary times, thal is to say the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-frrst century. This study is enhanced by analyses of migration of neighbouring countries. The example of Azerbaijan gathers different types of immigration that is the reason why we thought it would be relevant and meaningful to analyze the current issues of population movements. In addition, the study of migration of Azerbaijani is thrilling and stimulating because of ils cultural, political and especially economical, facets for a better understanding of our societies

The Azeri, Chirag, Gunashli (ACG) field is located offshore Azerbaijan. The reservoirs are multilayered sandstones forming traps within a major anticlinal structure. Proven crude oil reserves are estimated to contain 5.4 billion barrels of oil. In the past this area has been studied in regional detail but not at the reservoir scale with respect to the fluvio-deltaic sediments filling the northern shore of the ancient South Caspian Sea. The aim of this study is carried out the sedimentological, cyclostratigraphical analysis and reservoir characterization of Balakhany X Formation within the Productive Series which is considered to be one of the significant producing horizons. To be able to achieve this objective, a 30m thick section, which is mainly composed of siliciclastics, has been studied in detail on Balakhany X cores from C01 well Azeri field. In this study, detailed lithofacies analyses were performed and sandstone, mudstone, siltstone facies were recognized in the studied interval of the Balakhany X Formation. Litharenites and sublitharenites sandstones are the most abundant in the succession. Sedimentological analysis such as grain-size sphericity, provenance, XRD, SEM and grain surface texture were performed and their relationship with depositional environment were discussed. The grain size distribution of the samples along the succession shows distribution of fine to very fine sands. Sorting of sandstones ranges between moderately well to very well sorted. The provenance analysis of sandstones based on modal analysis of thin sections related to recycled orogen. According to interpretation of grain size parameters and grain surface textures analysis the main transporting agent of sands observed as wind, wave and river agents. High resolution cyclostratigraphy studies based on cm-m scaled cyclic occurrences of lithofacies along the measured section were performed. Milankovitch, sub-Milankovitch and millennial cycles were determined along the studied section. The petrophysical analysis revealed good to very good (18 to 24%) porosity and good permeability (10 to 538mD) in Balakhany X Formation. The porosity and permeability are affected by both textural and compositional controls. Grain size distribution along the reservoir section is fine to very fine sands. Influence of compaction was observed by the fractures and dissolutions on the sand grains. The calcite cement, grain-size variation, sorting and compaction are the main factors controlling porosity and permeability.

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